Free Realms Creative Director Laralyn McWilliams: Designing an MMO That’s as Fun to Play as it is Easy to Quit

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The MMO Gamer: That does seem to be a very big departure from the norm in many MMOs, where the mindset almost seems to be to force the player to work in order to experience the game…

If you want to raid tonight, go get 50 potions. If you want 50 potions, wander around until you’ve picked 100 herbs, and then stand for 15 minutes brewing them with your alchemy table.

I don’t know, is that why you think its appealing more to demographics you wouldn’t really expect? That players, even the hardcore, want to actually have some fun once in awhile in an MMO, and they’re finding the traditional titles lacking?

Laralyn McWilliams: Well, I think there’s a time for most players, not for the super hardcore, but for most players, there’s a time when you want both.

I think there’s time when you really want the satisfaction for having worked for weeks or months to get something, and there are times when you have a half an hour before you have to meet your friends for the movie and you just want to login some place, say hi to your friends, do something fun, and log back out again.

Free Realms is more about the second experience than it is about the first. There are things you have to work really hard to get, but compared to the end level content you have to work hard for in other MMOs, it’s just not as hard; there just not as much work.

Eventually there will be, probably 5 years from now we will have accumulated enough things in Free Realms because we’re adding achievements and other things that sort of summarize your experience, and give you goals beyond leveling up.

Over time, the game’s going to accumulate this huge mass of, You had to finish these 80 collections in order to get this uber collection of all of them.”

And as we continue to put out more jobs that are tiered on other jobs, somewhere down the line there’s going to be some uber ninja job that you had to have been playing the ninja for two years to get to this uber….so eventually I think the game will get there but since it wasn’t the original focus of it, it’s not something you do in it.

I think the hardcore players that are coming to Free Realms look at it like a refreshing break not as something that is ever going to replace their other game. It’s more, “You know, I don’t feel like raiding tonight. I just want to hang out with my friends, and dance, and play with my pet.”

The MMO Gamer: Aside from them, has the demographics you were aiming for prior to launch stayed true?

You were aiming more for children, and parents playing with their children. Have you been seeing that predominantly? Or has it been more of a mix throughout the age range?

Laralyn McWilliams: It s a little bit of a mix. You’ll have to look at the exact figure on this, because I think I’m pretty close, but I believe the figure is 64% of the players we have right now are in our target demographic, which is 10-15.

But the rest of them, we can’t tell. We know how old you are but we don’t know if you’re a parent, right? So what we’re seeing, just from what we’re seeing on the forums, that I would say it’s a good mix of people who just like the game, adults who like the game, and parents who play with kids.

So we are getting a lot of that, we are getting a lot of comments from people and we get posts on the forum so we know its parents cause they say, “My son is stuck on…” or, “I was playing with my daughter and…”

So we do know we are definitely hitting our core demographic by itself and we believe we are getting the parents as well. And I think that will grow over time because I think the more kids become involved with something and have fun the more they start talking friends and parents and relative into playing.

The MMO Gamer: I played Devil’s Advocate last year, and I asked you about the implications of marketing what I’m sure we both know is a very addictive genre to children.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse and get into that too much again, but you invoked the forums, so I wanted to ask:

There’s a Yahoo Group that’s been around forever called “EQ Widows,” where people can go and rant about things like, “My husband is playing this game 20 hours a day and having cyber-sex with a 16 year old Wood Elf and I’m going to divorce him, yadda yadda yadda.”

Have you run across any parents going onto your forum, saying, “Little Jimmy used to go out and play soccer all day, and play with his friends. Now he just sits inside and plays the game all day, you evil, evil people!”?

Laralyn McWilliams: No, not at all. That’s not to say we won’t, but right now I think the kids are liking it so much that it’s a positive experience for them and their parent.

The game is so easy for a parent to understand that it’s okay. It also has the ESRB rating of E-10+, which I don’t know that we had last year.

Your kid is saying, “Look at my dog, “ and, “Isn’t this cool, I have a ninja hat!” Those are the sorts of conversations he’s having with his mom.

At that point, the parents are getting engaged, too. However, as strange as this sounds, I think the real key is that Free Realms is easy to stop playing.

The stickiness in Free Realms is more in a player saying, “I like this world, I like my character. I want to play because it’s fun.” Similar to a lot of console games, you can play for half an hour, 45 minutes, or maybe an hour, and say, “That was fun.”

And then you put down the controller and go to a movie, or whatever. I think Free Realms has that quality, because you don’t have to work for hours to get somewhere.

If I think about some of the traditional MMOs that I really love, if I had 20 minutes, I don’t know if I’d really play them. Because I’m going to feel like…

The MMO Gamer: What can you do for 20 minutes? Go to the auction house, check your mailbox…

Laralyn McWilliams: Right, I’m going to be in the middle of something when the 20 minutes is up, whereas in Free Realms, in 20 minutes, I can do a ton.

I can advance a whole level in one job, make sure my pet’s alright, and find some treasure… I can do a ton of things. While it sounds strange for anyone to say we created a game that’s easy to quit, we really did!

It’s about long term. It’s about my long- term experience with the game, it’s not about my long day experience with the game.

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